NSA phone-records spying is totally, utterly illegal

[bwv812]

@LemoUtan

I’m sorry if you missed my point. I believed it clear enough. Let me, therefore, spell it out for you (I refer the honourable whatever to my initial post).

If your point was that you are not amazed by Obama’s defence of NSA surveillance, I’m not sure what your ongoing and bizarre focus on the word “you” and the use of capitalised names has to do with anything.

@LemoUtan

And I’m somewhat surprised that you believe my beliefs inconsistent. Largely because I’m not aware of having expressed any. I’m hardly responsible for your inferences about my beliefs.

You honestly don’t believe that using the word “executions” doesn’t convey any beliefs? Like, for example, a belief that what he’s doing actually is an execution? No? And that it’s improper to ask to explain why you used that word, and unpack what you meant by it? And do you think that saying someone is doing something “without due process” doesn’t convey a belief, either?

I’m sorry for making the apparently illegitimate logical leap that you didn’t intend to be complimentary when you said that Obama “remotely executes folk without due process.” Because apparently this is a purely neutral statement that no reasonable reader would construe as conveying any sort of judgment.

@LemoUtan

No. It just means you don’t get to pretend that I was the first person to refer directly to the other person in the engagement just because you didn’t happen to use the second person pronoun. If you want to say that your remarks were not directed at me personally though then I’m more than willing to accept your apology. Does that give you an idea of what my point was?

No. What is your point? That I was wrong to reply to you without using “you” or your name? That I was wrong to infer that when you said he executes people that you meant that the killings are executions? That I was wrong to infer that executions without due process are bad?

@chenille

That conclusion is a nightmare, essentially denying that right exists, if you can’t localize what a battelfield is or define exactly where you are at war.

At any rate, civilians should not be killed without some kind of process - at the very least some kind of inquiry after the fact. Obama has been killing them, and in the case of men, condemning them as fair targets because otherwise they wouldn’t have been nearby to be killed.

Whether it formally counts as execution or murder or some other form of butchery is quibbling about terminology, and adds very little here. It’s a horrible violation regardless.

When does someone stop being a civilian? Were French resistance fighters civilians? Were Viet Cong guerillas civilians? Do you become a civilian the moment you take your uniform off and stop being a civilian when you put it on? When can they legitimately be targeted?

If you’re expressing concern mainly about collateral damage, historically we’ve been very tolerant of this during wars. Heck, in WWII the US firebombings of Japan and Germany even targeted civilian populations. In my opinion most drone strikes have been undertaken in a way to minimize civilian casualties, but unfortunately they are still fairly indiscriminate if you’re within a certain radius. But there are drone strikes that have not incurred collateral damage: are these strikes still bad, to the extent that civilians are not involved?

I think the terminology matters. Was the killing of Osama bin Laden an execution, or merely some other form of butchery? Did the civilians killed in that compound get due process? Was that operation a terrible thing? Did it deny that the right of due process exists?